GENRE; Experimental
LABEL; Warp
REVIEWED;18 November, 2025
RATING; 8.5
Oneohtrix Point Never’s Tranquilizer finds Daniel Lopatin doing what he does best — folding forgotten sounds into uncanny, strangely affectionate new forms but with an unusually warm and immediate touch. Built from scavenged 1990s commercial sample CDs and rompler presets, the album feels like a recovered mixtape from a parallel pop history: familiar timbres and cheesy presets are repurposed into moments of real emotional weight. The record’s concept, cultural ephemera turned into architecture — is audible in every warped pad and brittle loop.
Where Tranquilizer excels is in its balance between intimacy and experimentation. Lopatin resists the snowballing abstractions of some previous works and leans into concise, song-sized pieces that still shift and surprise. Tracks like “Lifeworld” and “Bumpy” seduce with melody and texture, while “Cherry Blue” adds a surreal visual dimension via an eerie, painterly video — small, memorable collapses of sound that reward repeat listens. The record’s pacing favors fleeting ideas over longform indulgence, which makes it one of his most accessible records without sacrificing depth.
Critically, Tranquilizer reads as a thematic cousin to Replica same archival impulse, different emotional pitch but it’s less about nostalgia-as-pastime and more about the afterimage of media decay: sounds that are fading but insist on remaining vivid. Production-wise, Lopatin’s layering and micro-edits create a sense of structural tension; motifs arrive and dissolve before you can fully grasp them, which keeps the listener off-balance in the best way.
If there’s a complaint, it’s that the album’s brilliance can feel deliberately slippery: pleasures are often ephemeral, and the best moments are like catching reflections on water. Still, Tranquilizer is a masterclass in how archival material can be made to feel alive; playful, haunting, and strangely consoling. It’s a rewarding addition to Lopatin’s catalog.
